German ‘Black Bread’ – Schwarzbrot

As I have been baking bread for a few years now, the theme for this Bread Baking Day,’ancient’, really appealed to me: as a kid at my friend’s house, we helped her granny to prepare the breads for the weekly ‘baking day’, when the communal oven was heated up and the families of the village were bringing round their breads to bake. I still remember the little ‘baking house’ and the smell of the freshly baked bread. We would butter them and put a pinch of sugar on the warm slices – our idea of bliss.

Rather than going for an old-fashioned grain or method, I had a look at my cookbook, the great illustrated Kiehnle-Kochbuch from 1912. Obviously I don’t use the old version, I am in the possession of the updated 1951 anniversary edition:

I was given this book by my mum when I left home, as it is widely considered to be the gold standard of Swabian cookery. It is still printed in the old ‘Fraktur’ font, a font widely used in Germany until the mid-twentieth century. You might recognise it from World War II films and pictures: the Nazis loved it but abandoned it eventually for a more readable font as part of their taking-over-the world-strategy, realising that it helps when the conquered people can read your writing…

The second-hand book bears many traces of its previous owners, who made countless annotations, changed ingredients and – clearly – enjoyed a cup of coffee whilst baking:

CSI Stuttgart: clearly someone enjoyed a cup of coffee!

I am convinced she worked as a housekeeper for a bourgeois family in Stuttgart – a rather picky one, it seems, as several of the recipes are annotated with a ‘sind nicht erwünscht’, ‘not welcome’:

‘Sind nicht erwünscht’ means ‘not welcome’, the following recipe received an ‘auch nicht’:- ‘this one neither’.

Anyway, although there are countless recipes for cakes and pastries, there are only a few bread recipes, and one of them a very basic ‘Schwarzbrot’, which I used for this entry. I tried not to mess around with Frau Kiehnle, and to prove that I stuck to her instructions (unlike my predecessor of the ‘not welcome’ annotation) I will reprint them here in the original:

Some of the ingredients, such as the flour ‘no. 4’, I am not too sure about, so I replaced it with a mix of white and wholemeal bread flour; I think the wholemeal flour is perhaps more coarse than a German bread flour, making the bread more ‘healthy’ than the original and requiring more water than stated. I’d be grateful for any suggestions for a more ‘in-between’-type of bread flour! I also replaced the fresh yeast (10-15g) with dry active yeast, as fresh yeast is hard to come by here in the UK.

Schwarzbrot, or ‘black bread’

3 lb white bread flour

2 lb wholemeal bread flour

1 lb rye flour

60g sourdough starter

2-3 tsp dried active yeast

1.5 l water

25g salt

1-2 tsp caraway seeds (optional)

Frau Kiehnle mixes the yeast with 1/8l water and about 50g flour to make a thin liquid, which you leave covered overnight. With the dry yeast, I decided to cut this short and left it for an hour.

The starter bubbling away after a few minutes, thanks to the dry active yeast

The next day you mix in all the other ingredients to create a firm dough. I needed to add quite a substantial amount of water to make the dough kneadable, a result of the flour I used. Frau Kiehnle specifies a ‘firm’ dough, so feel free to add water as required. You need to knead this bread rather vigorously, for at least ten minutes, to get a nice consistency.

Cover and leave to rest for 4 hours in a warm place. If – like me – you have a day job, start the bread in the afternoon and let it prove in the fridge overnight.

The next day, preheat the oven to an unspecified ‘high’ heat (Frau Kiehnle was using a wood-burning stove it seems). I used a baking stone and heated the oven to 250C, placing a bowl of water at the bottom of the oven to create a nice crust.

Split the dough into 2 or three pieces and form loaves, which you leave to rest for 20-30 minutes. Frau Kiehnle uses an oiled bread tin, but I went for a banneton and a bowl with a piece of cloth.

Turn out your breads on your baking stone and reduce the heat to 220C. Bake for an hour. Unless you are using the communal baking house with its open fire, you will need to bake the bread in at least two batches. I made three loaves altogether, and will probably only ever use half the recipe to suit my oven.

The finished product

The bread turned out beautifully and just in time for Abendbrot, the typical German evening meal of bread, sliced hams, cheese and sausage, salad and beer.

German ‘Abendbrot’, the typical cold evening meal

But was it really as dark and sour as I had imagined? Or would I’ve been better off using a rye-flour starter instead? Only time – and many more breads – will tell. If you’re looking for something darker, check out my Pumpernickel.

Comments

Wonderful post, how very interesting! Great photos and the story is fascinating! I have a plan for a novel which involves an old cookery book which has messages written in it! The bread looks so delicious… I want some now!

I absolutely love old books like this! And your bread looks perfect 🙂 I have never baked German bread myself but my dad has baked it very often in the States (my mom missing it and his love of the bread is what I suppose brought him to try it) and he does a wonderful job. Great post, love it!

Thank you! Have a look at my sourdough starter recipe and my other bread, they were my introduction to breadmaking,
There are countless variations of German bread, and once you have your own starter you can start experimenting!

Popped in as I saw you had visited my blog and I’m so glad I did! What an amazing looking book – I have a few old ones like that too and I love reading them. And what incredible bread…it looks so good and I bet it tasted fantastic.

So interesting about the story behind that book – loved peering inside it and leafing through some of the pages with you. Glorious loaves too – stunning …I can imagine a little sugar sprinkled on a warm slice.

Hello, nice to meet you, thanks for coming to me, that’s more of an old traditional bread taken from a vintage book!! your bread is fantastic, I’ll definitely try it, I love vintage books and old recipes 🙂
See you soon ….

It sounds much more dramatic than it is – Schwarzbrot is really the most common type of German bread, and the ‘black’ refers to the rye flour used for it. Any bread made exclusively with wheat is therefore ‘white’ bread, or Weißbrot. Let me know how you get on if you give it a try!

Hi! This is some really great looking sourdough! What was the texture like? It looks like a really tight crumb, which is what I like in my rye. Was it soft and moist, or on the stiffer, drier side? I have a starter rarring to go and am thinking about trying this out!

It’s actually quite moist and sticky – I’ve only recently read somewhere that you shouldn’t knead rye sourdough too much, which seems to go against my instincts! The final texture has been quite light, at least in contrast to the brick-like texture I had dreaded 😉
Let me know what you went for – or if it worked out for you!

I only just stumbled across your blog but am so happy that I did! Schwarzbrot is one of my childhood favourites having grown up in Köln – I used to eat it toasted with Nutella! To have found this recipe is amazing! Thank you! I can’t wait to get to baking!

Lovely to hear from you, Denise! Shocked you used Nutella and not Aachener Nusspli though … 😉 I hope the bread works for you, we really liked it a lot! My little one, who is not very keen on the wholewheat breads, really enjoys a dark rye, especially the pumpernickel, which really surprises me.
Let me know how you get on!
Ginger x

[…] sourdough taste. I found something close to perfection in my grandmother’s cookery book, the Kiehnle Kochbuch of 1912, and have since decided that the French levain I had used as a starter might have been the […]

[…] Use a sharp serrated knife for it and cut at an angle, as if lifting a flap: this will help the bread opening in a nice flap. I went for a very basic shape and cut, but check out my more arty efforts here or here. […]

Meet Ginger

Hi, I'm Ginger - not so much domestic goddess as kitchen chaos personified: I will leave no bowl unturned nor spoon in the drawer in my quest for the perfect cake or dish.
Follow my journey to recreate Continental European breads, cakes and dinners in my tiny London kitchen.

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